Though Sunday drives are now a thing of the past, self-driving driverless autonomous cars might resurrect this quaint custom. Photocredit: Getty
Getty
The revered pastime of going for a Sunday drive.
When I was a kid, my parents only had one car for the family and my father used our motorized workhorse to drive to work each day. This meant that during the weekdays, our only source of automotive capability was by-and-large unavailable to the rest of us and meanwhile sat in a parking lot at my dad’s workplace some 25 miles away.
I’m not complaining, mind you, and merely indicating that the only time that the family car was around consisted mainly of the weekends. Our cherished car usually went unused on Saturdays, one might say it was a day of rest for the car, since us kids were involved in sports at the walking-distance sports fields and there wasn’t a need to use the car to get there, even though the vaunted machine was available for family use.
Come Sunday afternoons, my parents would often announce that we were to clamor into the car and we’d all go for a drive. I know this sounds rather quaint, and perhaps old-fashioned (tracing back to the 1920’s and 1930s, but I assure you I’m not that old), yet I must say that it became a treasured pastime and something that we kids all tremendously relished.
Of course, the Sunday drives that society used to undertake have gradually neared extinction.
Some say it was a waste of limited resources and needlessly used up gasoline. Others point out that the Sunday drive was emitting pollution when there’s no valid basis for using an emissions laden car engine. There have even been religious arguments that Sunday drives, if undertaken for the mere act of driving around, were potentially not in proper abidance to faith principles that are to be observed on Sundays. And so on.
It is claimed that Henry Ford was a staunch and outspoken advocate of people going for a Sunday drive, which seemingly was a bit of self-promotion for the selling of his newfangled cars, one might argue. And yet, maybe it worked because today there is an average of about 2.28 cars per household, and this ratio gets further boosted by the aspect that around one-third of households have three or more cars.
You could interpret these stats as meaning that it would be easier to therefore go for a leisurely Sunday drive, but another seemingly more likely interpretation is that there is no longer an impetus to go for a Sunday drive per se. In essence, overall, people have enough cars to get around throughout the week, and the novelty of going for a drive is no longer there, partially due to the plentiful availability of the car as a resource.
Don’t misunderstand my statement, I’m not suggesting that we have sufficient cars available for all, and nor that we have too many cars, I’m just pointing out that the novelty factor of actually getting into and going for a ride is not what it used to be. As a related aside, I am reminded of going for plane travels as a child on our vacation trips, and my parents got us dressed-up to do so, due to the aspect at that time that flying was a novelty. Today, I think we can all agree that flying is a commoditized and generally plentiful resource, allowing for masses to use airborne travel methods (my most recent flight from NYC to LAX had all manner of attire by the travelers, which I assure you did not especially tip the dressing-in-style scale).
Here’s a question to consider: Will the advent of self-driving driverless autonomous cars bring back the bygone tradition of going for a Sunday drive?
I’m betting that you might at first glance be perplexed that autonomous cars would have anything to do with Sunday driving and might summarily reject the proposition that somehow the advent of self-driving driverless cars would impact Sunday driving in any manner.
Read on.
Autonomous Cars Become Ridesharing Money Makers
Most pundits would assert that the advent of autonomous cars will lead to an expansive boon in ridesharing.
When I refer to autonomous cars, I am talking about a truly autonomous car, ones that do not require a human licensed driver, typically known as a Level 5 (a Level 4 is somewhat similar but allows for the AI to not have to be able to drive in all circumstances that a human could drive a car, which limits therefore its full utility).
For ridesharing purposes, a fully autonomous car is quite handy since it implies that a car can be available all of the time, 24×7, seven days a week (other than during maintenance time, etc.). It is like having a non-stop driver that is willing to take you wherever you want to go. Via a mobile app, you’ll be able to request a ride, an autonomous car shows-up, you ride to your destination, and the autonomous car then seeks another rider, doing this repeatedly, without the “driver” needing any rest or break in the driving effort.
Some believe that the cost of owning an autonomous car will be so high that only large companies will be able to afford them and then offer the driverless cars as a ridesharing service to the public. I’ve been a proponent for many years that there is a solid chance that individuals will seek to own autonomous cars, doing so to try and make some money on-the-side of their normal job (while sitting at work, your autonomous car is performing ridesharing and earning you “extra” monies on the side). Today’s conventional car ownership is not a money-maker scheme (you “lose” money), while with autonomous cars the potential for having a viable means to boost your income will spur a cottage industry of individuals owning and leveraging their driverless cars, I contend.
I realize that my prediction about individual car ownership in an era of plentiful autonomous cars has some controversy associated with it, but for my Sunday driving argument it is not a necessary condition, as you’ll see in a moment.
Breaking Up The Family And So Bringing It Back Together
Okay, so let’s envision that autonomous cars are whisking people around via ridesharing.
Currently, most of the driving or at least the consumption of driving efforts occurs during the weekdays, and the weekends are statistically portrayed as lesser driving days of the week. I suppose this makes logical sense that the weekdays, when we need to get to work and get to school, would be likely to involve driving or automotive travel more so than on the weekends when those needs are lessened.
I’m going to assume that the same pattern will continue into the future, unaffected by the rise of driverless cars.
During weekdays, you and your family members are all making use of autonomous cars, let’s say mainly via ridesharing, and can each go your own ways, since you don’t need an adult licensed driver. You might send the kids off to school in the morning, bereft of you as the parent having to drive them there.
In fact, there are some indications that as a family unit, we won’t be traveling together as much when using autonomous cars, instigated by the lack of needing an adult licensed driver in the car. Today, parents pretty much “must” ferry around their kids. In the future, no need to do so, just have the AI system do the driving and the autonomous car shelps the kids wherever you want them to be.
When the weekend arrives, I’ll bet that Saturdays are going to continue to be hectic days for the voluminous extracurricular activities of modern-day on-the-go kids. Studies showcase that the children of today are often booked and overbooked with back-to-back efforts on Saturdays, including sports, piano lessons, recitals, college readying study sessions, meditation sessions (well, some do this), and a plethora of over-achieving FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) cavalcade of efforts and duties.
Aha, I’ve now brought you to the doorstep of Sundays.
There is a chance that Sundays are a day to take a breather, for at least a smidgeon of Sunday’s hours, not all of Sunday since there is usually other tasks to be undertaken in this frenetic world of ours.
If the capacity of autonomous cars is such that it can meet demand on the busy weekdays, what happens to the “over-supply” that will exist on weekends and especially on Sundays, if indeed Sunday ends-up a lesser usage day?
Here’s two possibilities:
1. Owners of autonomous cars which are being used for ridesharing will offer discounts on taking Sunday rides, desirous of keeping their money-making machines in-action and making money, albeit at a tightened profit margin on Sundays, and it is conceivable too that by offering such Sunday discounts it could lead to brand loyalty, getting those Sunday-going passengers to then use their particular ridesharing service during the more profitable weekday traveling.
2. Individual owners of autonomous cars might decide that rather than trying to squeeze out some extra bucks on Sundays, they will go ahead and use their autonomous car for their own interests, including undertaking a leisurely Sunday drive with the family.
I’ll address the second point with some added clarifications.
Let’s assume that you individually own an autonomous car that is being used for ridesharing to buck-up your income. This creates enormous pressure within your family to avoid using your ridesharing money-maker for family purposes, since doing so “robs” the cash to be made when that driverless car is used by paying customers.
Oddly enough, it means that owning an autonomous car might be akin to my situation of our family having had only one car, a limited resource. Your owning an autonomous car will require a continual balance of using it for non-paying purposes, such as your own family use, versus using it as part of a ridesharing profit-seeking venture.
When then can you potentially make use of your beloved autonomous car that you decided to purchase? Well, when it is at its lowest utility value in the marketplace, which I’m arguing would likely be on Sundays.
We then have a confluence of the family all being extraordinarily busy during the week, taking individual rides as needed in autonomous cars, either your own or someone else’s, fragmenting the family unit, in a manner of speaking, and on Sundays your owned autonomous car not pressuring you as to having to quite make the dough, meaning that you and the family can go for a ride in your owned autonomous car, perhaps on those sunny Sunday afternoons.
Conclusion
That’s quite a portrayal of the future involving autonomous cars.
I hope you can see the logic about why it could return us to an era of Sunday family-oriented trips for fun.
Plus, assuming that autonomous cars are likely to be EVs (which makes sense due to the electrical power needed for the AI systems and sensors), the pollution aspects are lessened in comparison to gasoline powered vehicles, so you can feel a little bit better about such superfluous driving (hey, I don’t want to be a killjoy but of course the electrical power being consumed on those Sunday drives will need to come from someplace, such as hefty power plants; as such, that’s a “polluter” aspect you might want to include into your calculus).
Where will you be going in your autonomous car on those Sunday drives?
Well, the Machine Learning (ML) capability of driverless cars might figure out over time the places you and your family like to visit, and you can just tell the AI self-driving car to surprise you and the family and drive to a destination that the AI suggests is a good fit for you all.
Might that also do away with those Sunday drive “heated arguments” that sometimes embroil a family about where to go? Let’s hope so, it’d be a nice bonus for ensuring a serene family drive.
